


Tequila

by Suez



Category: Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22899364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suez/pseuds/Suez
Summary: Rachel's hand brushes against Kory's skin and images rush at her. Images that make her uncomfortable. Images that revealwhat happened between her and Dick.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Koriand'r, Garfield Logan/Raven
Comments: 2
Kudos: 54





	Tequila

Rachel caught the tequila through an unthinking graze of the hand. It stood on a counter, of a gas station? 7/11? She couldn’t tell. It stood alone in the memory, sculpted into something like … a key, a painting, Chekhov’s gun? She shook her head. Understanding always slipped away when she tried to be all cerebral about it. 

It was just a bottle of Tequila. No. _The_ bottle. 

Light sparkled around the glass, the way it does when memory fills in for physics. Brilliant, beautiful, full of colours that didn’t exist that night. 

Tequila births its own consequences. To Rachel, these came like images, moments distilled into seconds but that spoke of hours in their own language. The bottle lived its intended purpose differently than Kory could have guessed. The woman had carried it like a gun, a poison dart. She would pour. He would fall and spill. Kory didn’t know herself, couldn’t understand that _another_ woman, the one under the memories had her own gun and this one, aimed straight at herself. 

Dick opened the door. The towel hanging low at his hips. He made noises of protest, but there was no bite to them. His grumbling was practically an invitation. She poured twice. She drank once. His hand pulled his shot glass away. Dick Grayson wasn’t interested in tequila.

When he looked at her, she pulled the trigger. Bang, bang, bang. Kory fell and spilled.

Rachel shook her head again. Getting cerebral had one use, it stopped her from _feeling_ these moments too close. It made her uncomfortable. Made her dirty to get so close to other people’s desires. She was only human and when she saw their faces in the morning over breakfast, she didn’t want to see them … hungry.

She had seen him twice like this. The first time he had been fiercer, angrier. Dawn saw him like this too and she had wanted it at the time. But she couldn’t want this for too long. No one could. Last night Kory saw him quieter, deeper, every stroke fed the kindling and when he was done, she burned with a different light. Kory didn’t understand what she had found in him. She would have to remember all the men she had known, to read his lines the way he meant them.

But whenever she looked at him now, why did Kory see the bottle of Tequila? Whatever Dick was saying, whatever the situation, if Kory saw him, she tequila. 

Because it was the beginning? The Temptation? The Fall? The Design?

What did Dick see when he looked at her? Probably not tequila. She wouldn’t touch him to find out. That would be wrong. Right? 

Yes.

It wasn’t any of her business what they both saw. She shouldn’t even be thinking about this. They were her friends, her _parents_ and invading their minds was a dishonour they didn’t deserve.

But she had been alone a lot. In these few souls gathered around pancakes, she found a lifetime’s worth of living, of data. What is means to be a woman. To be a man. To have tequila standing gloriously, devastatingly on a counter. What it means to be sometimes fierce, sometimes quiet.

Gar ate his pancakes with a disturbing sort of passion. Tore into it like he tore into that man’s face. No. No. That was unkind. She hated that she saw this in him, because it meant he saw this in himself too. Should she talk to him? Yes, she should talk to him about this.

Did he drink tequila?

She wouldn’t touch him to get at his thoughts. But did tequila count as an intrusion? As a superpower? Would he spill?

Before she knocks on his door, she hesitates. No. This is not her language. What if the data was … misapplied? Her fist hovers, a ghost of a knock. Gratitude fills her heart with warmth. Relieved she didn’t finish her knock.

But she had forgotten the animal in Gar and this animal sensed her the moment her feet turned in his direction. The door flew open and on his face was a smile formed long before his hand touched the doorknob. He was dressed, no towel in sight. 

She swallows and holds up the bottle awkwardly between them. 

“Tequila?” she asks.


End file.
